Soon will be the beginning of another school year at Southern Illinois University @ Carbondale. All that I hear sounds promising with our recruiters working overtime and our campus community placing the last minute touches on our preparations for our wonderful students!
Civil Service staff such as the Grounds workers have been lovingly caring for the resplendent outdoors of SIUC.
As I walk the Campus on a daily basis I see Plant and Service Operations workers busily at their tasks of maintaining and enriching and beautifying the place that they are so dedicated to!
Accountants and clerks and Building Service Workers and Plumbers and Electricians and Carpenters and Locksmiths and Customer Service Representatives and Food Service staff are anxiously awaiting the return of our students and the coming of our new class!
Many civil service staff are working two and three and more jobs created by vacancies that have occurred do to budget constraints. They not only deserve their colleagues respect, they merit recognition by university administration and acknowledgment that without their efforts…there would not be a Campus for our students to come back to!
There are many well thought out theorys regarding how a university looses students and how they retain and gain them. Modalities have changed and the young people of today are not looking for the same college experience that their parents were. It has been postulated that our students are looking for a ‘turn key’ university experience and the bells and whistles of modern life are a requirement and a must have for the recruitment and retention of them.
All of these components have value and have their place…but they are not the answer at the soul of the question. At the heart of the matter students are looking for two primary needs in a comprehensive university experience. One would be excellent disciplines and professors to teach those courses in a caring and cutting edge manner. Second would be a university community and a regional community that cares about them and that welcomes them and that makes them feel at home!
We humans are social animals…we crave love and family and acceptance! Many of our students have left homes that provided them with less than what they needed of all of the above elements!
My friends can tell me anything…my enemies can keep their opinions to theirselves!
‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.’ Proverbs 27:6 KJV
The Happy Traveler 